Health goals amongst patients with Crohn's disease The role of the internet and digital technology

Introduction: Inflammatory bowel diseases, including Crohn's disease, have a significant impact on patients' lifestyle, requiring lifelong attention to health behavior.Objective: The aim of our study was to investigate health-related goals, emotions related to health goals, the use of infocommunication tools and their associations.Method: 79 patients with Crohn's disease (59.5% female, mean age 40.7 years, SD = 11.89) participated in the study. They answered demographic and health behaviour questions and completed the Personal Health Plans Question-naire, which assessed their personal health goals, positive and negative emotions about health goal(s), support for personal health goals from their physician, negative and positive effects (barriers/support) of achieving health goals, and digital technology and internet use.Results: 70% of patients had at least 1 health goal. The health goals were classified into four categories: physical activ-ity (43.6%), stress management (25.4%), nutrition (18%) and smoking cessation (7%). 71% of participants experi-enced at least average levels of positive emotions related to the health goal, but about 50% also experienced negative emotions. 51% of those with a health goal regularly use the internet and apps on smartphones. Infocommunication device use showed a medium-strength correlation with perceived health goal-related barrier/support (& rho; = 0.55, p<0.01), support from the person's doctor (& rho; = 0.45, p<0.05) and physical activity (& rho; = 0.40, p<0.01). Discussion: More than two-thirds of patients had a health goal; most of the goals were related to health behaviours that are also relevant to Crohn's disease, but few had healthy eating and smoking cessation as health goals. Half of those with a health goal regularly use the internet and apps on smartphones. Among health behaviours, physical ac-tivity was associated with infocommunication device use. Conclusion: It is recommended to investigate patients' health goals and infocommunication device use in the care of patients with Crohn's disease. This would allow the development of specific interventions to improve their health behaviour, which could increase the quality of life and disease prognosis.